Portsmouth goes ahead with hotly contested HMO licensing expansion

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Portsmouth is to go ahead with its contested additional licensing scheme but has promised to reward good landlords by charging them a lower licence fee and doing fewer inspections.

Landlords had urged their council not to go ahead with plans to extend licensing to about 4,000 three- and four-bed houses and pointed to questions about the previous scheme’s effectiveness.

Portsmouth and District Private Landlord Association believes additional licensing will not help resolve problems but says that instead, prices will be pushed up, while landlords may decide it’s not worth continuing to have smaller HMOs.

Although councillors approved the scheme’s launch on 1^st September 2023, they decided that those smaller HMOs which are seen to be well managed during the licence application process will be given a cheaper five-year licence (£746) while other properties will be granted licences for two and a half years (£772), or just a single year (£1,035).

Strong views

Cabinet member for safety in the community, councillor Jason Fazackarley, says: “We are grateful to more than 1,000 people who responded to the public consultation, and unsurprisingly there were some strong views expressed from our city’s landlords.

“We’ve listened to their concerns, particularly about the burden that licences put on landlords who are already providing excellent homes for their tenants.

“One aspect of the policy change we will debate will be introducing a tiered approach to these new licences if we decide to implement them.

“This would allow landlords we see providing good properties to hold licences for longer, cost them less and with fewer inspections than those who perform poorly and require regular review.”

Meanwhile, Warwick Council is considering an additional scheme that would include 700 smaller HMOs being licensed. If its proposal gets approved at a cabinet meeting on 7^th December, its consultation will run from 9^th January to 20^th March.

Read a guide to landlord licensing.

View Full Article: Portsmouth goes ahead with hotly contested HMO licensing expansion

NEW: Council to reject voluntary landlord register and begin selective licensing

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Landlords in Middlesborough have so far failed to convince their local council that a landlord-led membership scheme is a viable alternative to selective licensing.

Private Landlords Supporting Stockton (PLuSS) was set up in 2019 and managed by the local authority with the aim of creating a register and code of conduct to improve standards within the borough.

To date, 149 landlords have signed up, with 93 of them owning 612 properties within central Stockton and North Thornaby.

Little knowledge

A council report says this equates to about 40% of properties which would have been included in a proposed 2018 selective licensing scheme.  No new applications have been received since January.

It adds that its experience of working with the scheme was “mixed” and while a significant number of members operated in a professional manner with good procedures and policies, there were still examples of individual landlords with little knowledge of their legal responsibilities.

The council postponed a decision until last year but has now decided to look at selective licensing again in Central Stockton, North Thornaby and Newtown – where 61% of properties are privately rented – with another report due by summer 2023.

A further consultation is planned next year, and the scheme could start in spring 2024.

Councillor Nigel Cooke (pictured), cabinet member for regeneration and housing, says: “While the majority of private rental properties are well maintained and managed, sadly those which fall short of expectations can bring with them a range of challenges that blight communities.

“We want to take a robust stance on improving standards in the sector that will benefit landlords, residents and the wider local community and we believe these proposals will help us to do that.”

Read more stories about selective licensing.

View Full Article: NEW: Council to reject voluntary landlord register and begin selective licensing

2022: The year of cutting losses and tighter portfolios

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It’s been a tough year for portfolio landlords, and it’s fair to say that 2022 was up there with one of the most stressful and tumultuous years since the financial crisis for many landlords.

But for me personally, and many other landlords, it was also exactly the jolt I needed to act on my portfolio, especially regarding rents.

I also admit that I took a year or two longer to incorporate my portfolio in response to the Section 24 tax.  I should have acted sooner – I was caught napping at the wheel! Hey, nobody’s perfect.

For those of you who may not know me yet, I’m David Coughlin, founder, and director of National Residential and more recently, the Landlord Sales Agency.

Like many of you, I’m a private landlord having built a personal portfolio of 150 properties over the past 20 years and then going on to help other landlords buy and sell over 4000 properties.

During the past 20 years, I’ve also built a strong reputation as an industry expert and amassed a formidable network of peers and business owners in the property sector.

It was the last two years of economic change which caused me to set up The Landlord Sales Agency having been contacted by fellow portfolio landlords and peers in my network asking for my help and advice to sell their own tenanted properties.

Having experienced many of the challenges dealing with tenanted properties myself such as: trying to increase rents to offset interest rates; evicting problem tenants; selling tenanted properties for best prices; paying for repairs with tightening budgets; I put necessary measures in place and built a fantastic team and network to overcome these challenges for my own personal portfolio.

I was in the right niche at the right time with the right power-team so that I could help other landlords successfully overcome these issues quickly.

But this last year wasn’t without challenges, and as many of us were to find out, it was going to get a lot worse, and fast, before we discovered solutions.

Tough one

On the one hand, when I look back it’s easy to see why this year might have been a tough one: interest rates and taxes went up in an almost exponential way, inflation and the cost of living rose higher than ever before, and for landlords on tracker mortgages especially, concerns rose over deteriorating rental profits, with worries of future stagnation or worse deflating sales prices.

Then we had Section 24 and landlords not knowing whether they could incorporate, or even if they had the financial or technical resources to do so. Landlords feared paying more tax than they were making in profits. Added onto that was the volatile mix of rising regulatory costs: EICR (electrical) certificates required for us to continue to rent legally, expensive refurbs and even more regulations and costs with EPC ratings (which for some of us meant spending up to £10,000 per property).

Rocky times?

The future looked bleak, and when faced with the hard truth that we needed to sell our portfolios, this seemed like rocky times ahead.

I took a long, hard look at my own portfolio and came to the same conclusion: right, it’s time to downsize, so which properties are going to go?

That’s when I realised what I should have done years ago. They say that every cloud has a silver lining, and perhaps going into 2023, that’s exactly what the last year did for me.

What was clear was that with my focus on other business ventures, and fantastic relationships with my tenants, I’d avoided raising rents.

In fact, I’d not put my rents up in over 10 years while interest rates bobbled around at crazy lows of 0.1-0.5%.

It was an eye-opening hit of reality. Immediately I got to work and over these past 12 months to quickly match the local area rents, whilst ensuring we kept tenants happy by offering an explanation and support during the rent increases.

We were still proposing to charge tenants slightly less than the market rate and committed to resolve any nagging repairs.

For those who could not afford the increase we offered alternatives such as paying them a financial incentive to leave along with a full refund of their deposit.

Supportive

Most tenants were understanding and supportive and were more than happy to pay the rent increases because historically they’d been paying far less, and we were providing win-win solutions.

It seems simple, but I guarantee, if you’re a landlord reading this, a fine-toothed reassessment of your buy-to-let rents could make a huge difference. Straight away this tightened up my entire portfolio, and with that I was able to make the decisions I needed to make: sell the “dead weight” to counteract the financial consequences of the year; and keep only the very best properties going into 2023.

Once I’d reached the sweet spot of taking stock of my own portfolio and selling the properties I’d decided to let go of in the fastest way, for the highest possible prices with a brilliant team I’d created, I was able to do the exact same thing for landlords around me, with incredible results, and that’s how The Landlord Sales Agency was born.

So, as I look back on 2022 now with a smaller, but more efficient and profitable, portfolio I feel relieved to be going into the next year without all the stress and hassle of the year before.

Shake-up

Yes, in an ideal world perhaps we’d all like to have kept our bigger, diverse portfolios, but on the other hand maybe this is exactly the shake-up we needed.

A fresh portfolio with smaller, better, more manageable properties that require far less work, as many of us hit an age where sooner, rather than later, we’ll be looking to kick back, enjoy and retire after a wild ride in this ever-changing industry we call Property.

For more reading on the economic and political landscape of the past year and what it has meant for landlords, you can see Total Landlord’s full month-by-month round up of 2022 here.

And for a detailed look at what’s happened to the economy and the UK housing market over the last couple of years, and what the forecasters are suggesting will happen in 2023 and beyond, read Total Landlord’s Economic and property market update for 2023.

Author bio:

David Coughlin is an entrepreneur, co-founder of the National Association of Property Buyers and founder and director of both National Residential and the Landlord Sales Agency. He’s one of the UKs most recognised private landlords, and best known for being a leading expert within the UK property industry, with over 20 years of experience.

 [CF1]Photo also attached

View Full Article: 2022: The year of cutting losses and tighter portfolios

Holding Fee Refund?

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Hello, I’m a student looking for rental properties next year!

We paid a holding fee of £400 and haven’t yet signed any lease or paid further deposits, however, we found the letting agent seemed a little dodgy and pushing for payments as quick as possible.

View Full Article: Holding Fee Refund?

Early Repayment Charge?

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Hello, I currently have a 5 year fixed BTL mortgage with Leeds building society at 2.14%. I am looking to sell the property although I am being asked for an early repayment charge of £3k.

Given the base rate is now 3%

View Full Article: Early Repayment Charge?

New platform to help tenants buy rented homes from landlords

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A new tech platform aims to help renters buy their own home by letting them build up credits based on their everyday spending and rental data.

Homely’s MortgageReady system rewards good behaviour through tracking rent payments, utilities and other key regular payments, which enhances renters’ credit rating.

Linking to open banking, its software can work out affordability risk based on their spending habits. It records how much someone is spending and bringing in each month, and suggests ways of improving saving with spending tips and by using partner brands and their offers.

The platform also helps people build up their deposits through a smart recommendation engine which educates them about mortgages and lets lenders make better lending decisions based on the information gleaned about each tenant.

Good deals

The platform can then notify potential homeowners as soon as they are ready to take on a mortgage and points them towards good deals.

For those still happy to rent, Homely for Renters lets would-be-tenants search for properties using access to data histories on a property’s condition and maintenance and the experience of previous tenants.

It can also help landlords perform ongoing servicing and maintenance, while its LandlordReady and LandordQuality system filters data back to tenants, to hold landlords more accountable.

Co-founder and CEO, Lewis Scott (pictured), believes it’s the first digital platform to bring the whole market together by reducing inefficiency and improving communication. “We feel our connection between renters and landlords will create a better quality rental environmental and offer tenants an unrivalled platform in efficiency and standards,” he adds.

Homely launches officially early next year.

View Full Article: New platform to help tenants buy rented homes from landlords

Home sellers slash prices to find a buyer

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Since September, 10% of homes for sale have had a price reduction of 5%, as buyer demand slumps by 44%, Zoopla reveals.

The property platform also highlights that nearly a third of homes in the South East and East of England –

View Full Article: Home sellers slash prices to find a buyer

Greens demand rent freeze and eviction ban

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An immediate cap on rent increases and a ban on no-fault evictions until at least the end of March 2023 are being demanded by the Green Party.

The party says the government must urgently bring forward its promised Renters Reform Bill in time to stave off ‘a winter of evictions and homelessness’.

View Full Article: Greens demand rent freeze and eviction ban